Confirming assumptions.

Today, however, I was scrolling through CCP_Diagoras tweets. Lo and behold, back on May 10 of this year he had this gem:

John Turbefield ‏@CCP_Diagoras
Mining numbers! Average mined per day for the 7 days before escalation: High (2.7bn m3), Low (9.3m m3), Null (696m m3), WH (97.7m m3).

Wow.

For every m3 mined in Lo-sec we see over 10 come from wormholes, 77 come from null-space, and a whopping 300 come from hi-sec.

Now, I’ve read several EVE bloggers who complain about all the players who just play in hi-sec, never risking the PVP for which EVE is famous. And even though I’m a carebear myself, I agree. The nature of EVE is such that players should face risk. Heck, the nature of most MMO gaming is that they should face at least some risk.

However, there has to be reward to justify the risk. There has to be a reason for players who are highly vulnerable to put themselves out where they can be shot, where they have to learn at least how to avoid, evade, and escape unwanted attention.

At the same time, there’s a push by a lot of players to make hi-sec even safer — to create a true safe-haven. And a lot of players is a lot of money; they are not going to get ignored. My opinion, they SHOULDN’T be ignored. Just… not allowed to win every angle of the agreement.

Obviously this means I disagree with the players who say CCP should make hi-sec even less safe instead of safer. I’m not convinced roiling the waters will push players into rougher seas. Instead I think it’ll just push them out. As I said, I think the key is to pull instead of push.

There are some players who suggest making ores dependent on security levels. In some ways this is tempting. It pulls players out if they want anything but Veldspar. The downside is the stratification. And, in my opinion, the fact it doesn’t play hard enough on the greed button. It’s also a major disruption from what was to what is. Yes, this happens with every revision. But suddenly never having Veldspar in lowsec or nullspace? It’s a bit much, I think, to require SOVspace to pay for miners in high-sec just for the most used minerals.

My recommendation is to play the quasi-reality card. After all this time hi-sec mining is reaching a point of diminishing returns. Reduce the amount of ore that can come from any asteroid belt – “simply” change a number of hi-sec mineral asteroids to something else. Or extend the reset timer. Or reduce how much is available per asteroid. Or a mix and match of the above, with extras.

In simple keep Hi-Sec as safe as it is (or even safer) but reduce the potential for mining wealth. Make the real money, the real gains, in null, WH, but especially lo-sec space. I think the churn will be more fun for everyone in the long run.

About…

I've experience with many priests of many races and specs on several servers. The more I play, the more I realize how much I do not yet know. This is a share of some of what I have learned.
My main these days is Zingiber on the Undermine server.